


Almost Too Small For Sight

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2010-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:05:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sam is temporarily blinded, Dean provides him with a guide to help keep him safe while his eyes heal. Title comes from Shakespeare's "King Lear."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Almost Too Small For Sight

  
In hindsight, Sam's pretty sure he should have closed his eyes.

"I told you to close your eyes," Dean says. Case in point.

Sam blinks against the dazzling blackness that the rest of the world has become. It's like looking into a black hole – his eyes are open, but all he can see is this endless blanket of night. "You weren't _specific_."

"I have to be specific? Oh, by the way Sam, Cas is gonna pull some major angel stunt that'll involve _leaving his body_ for a while, so _close your fucking eyes_. You see how long that took me? We'd have been dead. Like, a dozen times over."

Sam is pretty sure that Cas is still hovering by the door to the motel room, probably looking contrite and possibly a little like a kicked puppy.

"It is impermanent," he had said, after he had once again hidden himself away in his vessel. That's the only reason that Dean isn't freaking out and trying to find a cure for this, and why Sam is taking it as well as he is. "The damage will repair itself. You only caught a…a glimpse of a reflection."

_Thank God for glass windows_, Sam thinks, not for the first time.

"So, how long is this gonna last, Cas?" Dean asks, and Sam can hear the barely-concealed worry in his voice. Sam is no use to anyone if he can't see, least of all _himself_. He'll end up getting himself seriously injured before the week is out if he tries to go with Dean on a hunt.

Sam turns his head in the direction of Castiel's voice as the angel clears his throat. Yeah, he's pretty sure that's coming from the door. "It should not be long." Except Cas sounds hesitant. Supremely so. "Perhaps…a month?"

Dean makes a noise like a wounded elephant.

"A _month_," he repeats ominously, and Sam realizes, with no small amount of regret, that he's going to have to endure Dean bitching at him for thirty days.

Fuck.

~

They're about a week into Sam's month-long hiatus from hunting when Dean carefully knocks on the door to the room (different motel, but the same layout, so that Sam doesn't become confused and trip over a lamp or something), announcing his presence. Years of hunting have left both of them with light footsteps – if Dean doesn't make himself known, Sam won't notice him. They learned this the hard way, a few days after Sam was blinded (_temporarily_, he reminds himself), and Dean had snuck up on him and whispered 'Boo' in Sam's ear.

Sam had punched him in the mouth.

Dean doesn't sneak up on him any more.

"What?" Sam asks, because he can't read Dean's expression, can't tell if he wants something or if he's just dropping by to check up on Sam. They're trying to stick to easier hunts, for now. Routine hauntings. Things that Dean doesn't really need Sam's help with.

"I, uh. I brought you something."

Footsteps. Two pairs of them. There's a jingling sound, like…dog tags? Some kind of necklace? And then Sam feels a warm weight settle next to his legs on the bed. Human-sized. A hand touches his knee – not Dean's hand – and Sam flinches instinctively away. The warmth retracts, almost apologetic.

"I called Bobby," he hears Dean say. "He knows a guy who knows a guy, and…well, it's not like you're gonna be _seeing_, but I thought this might…help. At least, until you get your sight back, and then we have to return him."

Dean grabs Sam's hand – he can tell it's Dean, this time, because of the calluses, the new scars – and moves it, sets it on top of something that's warm and soft. The crown of someone's head. As nice as their hair is, Sam is still really, really confused.

"Dean," he says.

"Oh! Hey! Uh, just remembered, I need to talk to Cas about something, so, uh. You and your new buddy just…get acquainted, yeah? He's trained to like…get your shoes and answer doors and shit."

And then he hears Dean's rapid retreat, footsteps growing distant, and then the door to the room shutting.

Sam's heard of guide dogs, but guide _people_? That's…well, maybe it isn't a person, if Bobby rustled it up. Maybe it's like a golem or a simulacrum. Which is…weird, to say the least, but it would explain why Dean keeps talking about this obviously human-shaped thing like it's an animal.

"I'm pretty sure you need to go through training before you get to have a Seeing Eye dog," Sam says to the golem. Thing. He smoothes his palm through its hair, down over the curve of its jaw and cheek - no, _his_ jaw. That's definitely a guy-shaped face.

"And I'm pretty sure Dean doesn't know that," he muses. "Well, I guess we don't have to tell him. And it's not like you're going to hurt anything."

The golem makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like laughter, and then curls himself up around Sam's legs, weighing him down. For a golem, he's awfully small. But then, if Sam's being honest with himself, he likes small things. Small animals, small women, hell, small men.

"I'm gonna call you Geoffrey," Sam says absently, barely keeping himself from yawning. There's been little else for him to do besides catch up on some much-needed rest – he hasn't had any dreams about Lucifer yet (_thank God_), but he's still sleeping as much as he can, trying to erase the weariness in his bones before he has to be up and active again. "I always thought Geoffrey was a good name. For a dog, you know. Not that you're a dog. Why am I explaining myself to you?"

The golem doesn't answer. Sam closes his eyes (the blackness doesn't change), and wonders if he should feel weird about falling asleep with some man-shaped thing in the bed with him. Because he doesn't.

Maybe _that's_ the weird part.

~

Castiel treats the golem with stony silence, and Dean tries his hardest to ignore that he even exists, which means that Sam ends up spending more time with Geoffrey than he does with his own brother. Which is…okay, not _ideal_, but he's been through worse. And it's not like Dean is actively avoiding him, he's just got things to do. Hunting, hustling pool…spending time with Cas.

Yeah. Okay. Maybe Sam is a little jealous.

"I don't understand why Dean gets his own _personal_ angel," he tells Geoffrey one evening. He's sitting in the Impala while Dean does a pretty simple salt and burn in the nearby cemetary. Geoffrey is sitting in the back because, as Dean had put it, "Only humans and angels ride shotgun."

Which makes Sam wonder what Dean thought he was going to do. Let the golem ride in his lap or something? He's small, but he isn't _that_ small.

"I mean," he continues, "I get it. I do. And I'm not…bitter, or anything. It just seems like Heaven's always been way more concerned with Dean succeeding, and…"

He lets out a long, slow breath that does nothing to dispel the darkness in front of his eyes, or the thickness of his tongue.

"I just wish someone had that much faith in _me_," he says softly.

Geoffrey makes a soft sound, a chuff or a laugh, and then Sam can feel him leaning forward, pressing something against Sam's arm. He fumbles for it, feels out the shape of it with his fingers. Plastic wrapper. Square shape. He taps it, and it bends, slightly. When Sam raises it to his face, he can smell…

"Chocolate?" He finds the edge of the plastic, tears at it until the smell is stronger. It's definitely a half-melted chocolate bar, gooey against his fingertips. He licks the chocolate away, and Geoffrey makes a noise that Sam interprets as approval.

"You shouldn't just pick things up," he scolds gently. "Next time you see something you think I'd like, you bring it to Dean so he can pay for it, okay? You're a guide, not my nanny."

He wonders if Geoffrey is capable of recognizing the distinction.

~

"Dude," Dean says, "keep your pet off the bed."

"He isn't my _pet_," Sam protests. Geoffrey's hair is soft beneath his fingers. Sometimes he finds himself reaching for the golem, even though he knows what it looks like – he is essentially petting something that's shaped like a full-grown man.

"Your _Seeing Eye dog_, then," Dean says.

Sam tries to speak up, to say that calling Geoffrey a 'dog' isn't any better than calling him a 'pet,' but before he can he hears Dean grab the keys to the Impala and then exit the room.

"Don't listen to him," Sam murmurs, and Geoffrey sighs. "He's just pissed because he won't man up and tell Cas how he feels."

Geoffrey makes a sound that's awfully similar to a snicker, and Sam nods.

"Exactly," he says. "I don't even need to see to know they're practically undressing each other every time they're in the same room. It's that obvious. Maybe I should buy them a gift basket or something? 'Please fuck before you drive me crazy.'"

Geoffrey nudges against Sam's hand, urges it into a slow stroke down the curve of the golem's spine.

"Yeah," Sam says, "I don't think Hallmark makes cards for that, either."

~

Geoffrey likes to bring him candy. The chocolate bar wasn't just a one-time thing – Geoffrey does it _all the time_. Sam wakes up to find packets of Skittles half-open and spilling out onto his pillow, sticky against his skin. He tries to put on socks (no small feat when you're temporarily blind) and finds them already stuffed with chocolate squares.

Occasionally he'll find Twizzlers, twined in ropes around his wrists and ankles. And maybe he should be more concerned about his golem's penchant for candy bondage, but mostly he just finds it…endearing. Geoffrey is trying to make him happy in the simplest ways possible, by taking in Sam's reactions to stimulus and then determining which is good, and which is bad.

Apparently, 'sweets' ranked high on the good scale.

Sometimes, when Sam is halfway between sleep and wakefulness, when the darkness in front of his eyes almost seems like it's meant to be there, he'll feel Geoffrey curl against him, warm and heavy and solid. Once, he thought he felt the brush of lips against his temple.

But that was probably just a dream.

~

Geoffrey is better company than Sam ever thought he would be. He's not just instrumental in helping Sam to get around (having him allows Sam to venture outside for the first time in weeks, in order to seek out food that isn't take-out or crap brought back from diners), but he's also…a good listener. Watchful. Careful. When Sam accidentally knocks things over, Geoffrey is the one to catch them. When Sam stubs his toes against a wall he didn't even know was there, Geoffrey is the one who helps him get his shoe off, who rubs his foot until the pain recedes.

It's sort of like having an unerring, endlessly loyal butler who follows you around and obeys your every whim. And even though that would sound appealing to just about anyone else, it makes Sam a little uncomfortable.

"I kinda wish you were more than just a golem," Sam murmurs one night, Geoffrey curled against his side and Dean snoring in the other bed. "Anything that's smart enough to learn the difference between an Almond Joy and a Mounds deserves better than this."

Geoffrey makes a noise that's sort of contemplative; Sam can feel him shifting around, like he's thinking of doing something. Usually this precedes an attempt to go and get candy, so Sam reaches down and grasps at the golem's arm, searching, fumbling through blackness.

"Geoffrey," he says softly. He doesn't want to wake Dean – they've already fought, about this, about Sam talking to the only thing in the world that will listen to him, these days. Dean thinks it's weird. Unnatural or something. Like Sam's too attached. And Sam knows it's only for the month, he knows that Geoffrey has to go back to Bobby's friend at some point, but right now…

"_Sam_," he thinks he hears, soft and whisper-thin, a bare breath in the darkness, and then a smiling mouth covers his, a warm body drapes over him. He makes a startled, half-aware sound at the back of his throat, because this is _weird_. Geoffrey isn't even a real person, isn't even _sentient_, not in the way that humans are, but it's been so long since anyone has touched him in anything but anger or pity, and a month spent in darkness has left him feeling so, so alone.

He breathes into the golem's mouth, swallows the questioning noise that Geoffrey makes, soothes it with a palm against a warm, curved spine. Geoffrey's skin isn't textured, the way Sam thinks golems usually are. Made of clay, perhaps, instead of granite. And it's so hard to think that this is a creature that was made out of dust and then brought to life, rather than…than another person. Another human.

"Fuck," he sighs, shaky against Geoffrey's mouth, fever-warm and wet and slack with the mimicry of desire. The golem is all firm press of almost-skin, and the hard length of Sam's cock trapped between them, a biting ache. Geoffrey breathes against the corner of his mouth, and Sam slowly curls his arm around the curve of a waist, fumbles until he catches a hipbone with his fingertips.

"Okay," he whispers, "this is the part where you lead me to the bathroom without waking Dean up. Because I am _not_ jerking off with my brother in the bed next to me." Dean's that inconsiderate, but Sam isn't. And besides, he doesn't want Dean to wake up and find Sam…what? Sucking face with a glorified Ken doll? Golems aren't even made to be anatomically accurate; Geoffrey wouldn't get _anything_ out of Sam…touching him. Kissing him.

Geoffrey helps him stand up, and Sam thinks that if he keeps telling himself that, he'll be able to push away the sense-memory of Geoffrey's hips pushing against his, an answering line of heat there, and the way he had breathed into Sam's mouth, like it was something he wanted.

~

One month and three days later, and Sam opens his eyes to find that he can _see_.

Shades of grey only, no colors yet, but he can make out shapes, and, if he's close enough, the fine detail of faces. Dean celebrates by taken Sam out to a bar and force-feeding him beer nuts and alcohol until Sam finally puts his foot down and says that he's too tired to drink any more.

It's a lie. Sam is so wired that he feels like he's about to vibrate out of his skin. After a solid month of resting, allowing old injuries to heal, and straightening out his sleeping schedule, Sam is ready to take on every vampire, demon, and ghost that comes their way.

But first, he desperately wants to see Geoffrey. To see what he looks like. To study the mouth that had kissed him, the not-flesh that had felt exactly like touching another person.

The bar is only a few blocks from the motel they're staying at. Sam sprints down the sidewalk, dodging around pedestrians and laughing at the sheer wonder of being able to _see_ again, giddiness welling up in his chest until he's pretty sure he's going to burst. Dean calls after him, but Sam doesn't slow down until he's reached their room, fumbling to yank open the door.

"Geoffrey!" He calls out, but there's no answer.

The room is empty.

He searches, even though it's a futile endeavor at best – the room is too small and too bare to be hiding anything larger than dust bunnies. Still, Sam checks under the bed, and in the bathroom. He even asks the night manager if he saw anyone leaving the room, but, when asked for a description, he's stumped. He doesn't know what Geoffrey actually _looks_ like, and he isn't about to explain to Carl the night manager that he was temporarily blinded by an angel, but he's fine now, really, he got better.

Sam returns to the room, occasionally stumbling when his greyscale vision can't determine the difference between a shadow and a crack in the pavement. Dean pulls up in the Impala just as he reaches the door; he sticks his head out the window and stares at Sam.

"What was that all about?"

Sam says, "Geoffrey," and then, after a long moment, "He's gone."

"Well, yeah. I called Bobby when you woke up. He must have asked someone to swing by."

Sam is totally not going to throw a tantrum. He's a grown fucking man and Geoffrey wasn't even a person, wasn't even _real_, not in any way that counted. There hadn't been a soul, beneath those soft lips.

He just feels like someone stole his best friend, is all.

"I didn't get to say goodbye," Sam says, and Dean looks at him like he's grown a second head.

"Dude," he says. "It was a fucking _dog_. Get over it. Now come on, we've been in this town for a week and I'm getting antsy."

A dog. That's the third or fourth time Dean's said something along those lines. _Get that stupid mutt off the bed, Sam,_ or _Make sure your pooch over there doesn't eat the Chinese food._ Sam had just assumed…he had assumed that Dean was making fun of Geoffrey.

Stricken, he all but yanks the door off its hinges.

The room hasn't changed. This room, and a dozen others like it…These rooms where he had slept, with Geoffrey curled against his legs, where he had eaten candy that had appeared without warning on his nightstand while he was asleep. These rooms where he had allowed himself to be kissed (_had kissed back_) a creature that he had been sure was a golem, that Dean had only ever seen as a _dog_.

Holy _fuck_, that's disturbing.

Sam sinks down onto the bed, the sheets still rumpled from where Dean had yanked him from under the covers that morning.

Now that he thinks about it, he can't remember feeling Geoffrey nearby, when he woke up. There had been no curl of warmth against his side, no sound of gentle breathing other than his own.

Sam blinks down at the pillow.

There's an Almond Joy resting there, and he's pretty sure there wasn't any candy in the room when he left. Or when he came back the first time, when he had torn the place apart _looking_.

Sam reaches for it, the plastic crinkling, and his fingertips brush against something…soft. Too soft to be the pillow. He moves the candy, and watches the feather it had been holding in place shift across the starched, too-scratchy sheets.

It's dark, though Sam can't tell if it's black or grey or brown or…fucking purple, for all he knows. But it's laced with streaks of white so bright they feel like ice against his retinas, a white so pure that it makes him think of _concepts_ instead of comparisons – sound, and chaos, and force. It's the whiteness that was there when the world was created.

After a month of nothing but darkness, Sam curls his fingers around this sliver of light and holds on to it.

Candy, and feathers. Sam's smart enough to put two and two together.

"Gabriel," he breathes out, and he swears he hears his name in response, a slow and laughing whisper.

"_Sam_," Gabriel sighs back, but when Sam looks up, there's no one in the room but him.


End file.
